“Acer would be complementary to Dell in several ways,” Sacconaghi wrote. “It is strong in Europe and Asia, has higher market share in notebooks than desktops and has an established, indirect distribution model.”

He said: “While we have no evidence that a Dell-Acer combination is being considered by either party, we do believe such a move could make strategic and financial sense.”

Mergers are always tricky to predict, and Dell has been known to be averse to big acquisitions.

But then again, the PC industry has seen some pretty dramatic megamergers in the last few years: HP gobbled up Compaq, then IBM sold its PC business to Lenovo.